The field of the invention is dialysis procedures and the invention relates more particularly to the type of dialysis that is carried out in a tubular membrane.
The process of dialysis is well known and involves the placing of a sample on one side of a membrane and a solvent on the other side of the membrane. Solutes of a small size which are small enough to pass through the wall of the dialysis membrane will pass from the sample to the solvent whereas the larger solutes, or macro solutes, will not be capable of passing through the dialysis membrane and, thus, will remain in the sample. By such a process, micro solutes, such as salts, may be removed from a sample by dialysis.
Dialysis tubing has been used to carry out this operation and typically one end of the tubing is clamped with a clamp of the type shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,874,042. This permits the easy filling of a length of tubing and in the past various means were used such as the placing of one or more marbles inside the tubing to weight one end thereof. The clamps of the type shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,874,042 are typically lighter than the dialysis bath and, thus, tend to float therein. This does not optimize the processing since it is advantageous to maintain the tubing in a vertical manner near the center of the dialysis bath so that the concentration on the outer surface of the membrane will remain low in that salts, and the like, passing through the dialysis tubing will readily be diffused in the bath.